SolidWorks World 2012 – Day 3 General Session Update #sww12

Today is the last day of SolidWorks World 2012, and it's been great so far. Everyone had a great time at last night's block party. Today kicked off with Mark Schneider announcing the winners of this year's Model Mania contest. Congratulations to Neil Custard of SolidWorksTips.com for winning the user division, and to Mike Spens of GoEngineer for winning the reseller division.

That led straight into What's New for SolidWorks 2013. This year the team came up with a sort of "Back to the Future" theme, featuring SolidWorks founder Jon Hirschtick. Some of the enhancements that got the most enthusiastic response were previous release interoperability, variable pattern instances and the ability to insert multiple parts. Be on the lookout for these when SolidWorks 2013 goes into beta later this summer.

We then announced this year's top-ten list, which was brought to us by students from Assabet Valley Technical High School, and reads like this:

1. Start using more CPU cores

2. Mass properties should include the option to automatically put a point at the center of gravity

3. Don't delete your children, dangle them instead

4. Address "shaded with edges bleed through" issue

5. Reduce the bounding box of drawing views to visible components only

6. Ability to control a plane's front & back side orientation

7. Dimensions should stay where you place them

8. Escape key should immediately return control of the interface

9. Add "lock rotation" option to cylindrical mates

10. Add a "thread creation wizard"

Marie Planchard then introduced us to French customer Aldebaran Robotics, which is doing some amazing work, including using robots for therapeutic purposes. They talked about the evolution of Aldebaran Robotics, the SolidWorks skill sets of the company’s designers and how founder Bruno Maisonnier forged his professional path through technology and education.

Bruno also detailed how robotics can perform therapy for the disabled in a way that humans can’t. The secret is the way that robots interact and respond to patient needs and communication—a true illustration of the influence of technology.

And before closing out the day, Bertrand Sicot returned to announce the date and location of next year's SolidWorks World, which will be in Orlando, Florida from January 20 – 23, 2013.

That's it for this year. Thanks for following along, and check back in later for the video.